Mint 14 on Aspire D270: X can't find screen

[Ujot]

Hello everybody

Yesterday I downloaded Mint 14 (MATE). When I tried to install it on my Acer Aspire One D270 Netbook, it couldn't load the live system because X "can't find (the) screens". When I plugged in an additional screen I got the same picture on both screens but it worked. After the installation, however, I got the same mistake again but this time, the workaround with the the external screen does not work. The system loads but without starting X.

Has anyone come across a similar problem and/or can tell me what to do (besides of getting back to Mint 13 )

Thank you.

[owari]

I had the same problem with many distros, including Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu 12.10. As much as i have read about Aspire D270 its graphics Driver is not well supported in Linux world, however I am now using LMDE 2012-4 and happy with it, even without updating its packages since once I tried to update its xserver.xorg and it failed the way you already mentioned, no X!

[Ujot]

Perhaps I should mention that Mint 13 worked (almost) perfectly, despite the generic graphics driver

[AlbertP]

Please run inxi -Gx in terminal and post the output, then we'll know what graphics card the computer has.

[jpggsb]

Hello

I have exactly the same problem on the same notebook.
I give the result of inxi -Gx to accelerate the issue.

Graphics: Card: Intel Atom Processor D2xxx/N2xxx Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
X.Org: 1.13.0 drivers: vesa,intel (unloaded: fbdev) Resolution: 1024x600@60.0hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x301) GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 9.0 Direct Rendering: Yes

I can work, but I have to enter with the "recovery mode". It works well, but it's not ideal

Thank's

[AlbertP]

@ Ujot, owari, and jpggsb: I suppose you're all having the same laptop with the same GPU. Please install cedarview-graphics-drivers from Software Manager.

[jpggsb]

I don't find any "cedar-graphics-drivers" with the Software manager, and no more among the synaptic packages!

[AlbertP]

Ok sorry, that one is only available on 13. Intel has yet to release a driver compatible with 14.

[nickitson]

Hi,

I can add to this, but I don't have much tech. knowledge, so the vocab may be off, and I can't offer a solution, just an experience. I'm hoping someone else can make use of it and let me know what's happening. I have an Acer Aspire D270 as well. I am keeping that as built, but for some while I have run LMDE from a partition on an external HDD. I have put Mint 14 on my old netbook A110L and liked the way it looked and ran, so I decided to replace LMDE on the USB HDD with 14 as well. When LMDE boots up on the d270 there is something about the fonts that looks a bit 'soft'.

Booting a 'live cd' on a usb stick is no problem. Everything comes up and looks great; crystal clear and sharp desktop. I can run the install to the external HDD without issue, but when I restart and boot from the external HDD I just about see the splash and the boot process then reports a problem with running X-server and suggests that its not configured properly. How did I manage to boot with no problems from the USB live cd stick?

I have tried re-booting from the external HDD a few times and get the same problem. I have then run the boot in recovery mode, selecting the option to fix or re-write grub? (sorry, not looking at that screen at the moment). A bit of processing goes on and then the D270 seems to hang. If I now force power off and re-boot from the external HDD (not in recovery mode), Mint 14 starts up fine. The Gui is snappy and I can get all the latest updates installed.

If I shut down and restart again from the external hdd, I'm back to square one, no x-server. Does that help anyone? If you have any ideas, I'd be eternally grateful.

Thanks in anticipation.

[owari]

Hi again,
Just saw this link about Puppy linux titled "Cedarview graphics support in Slacko"

[url]http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=83636
[/url]

which has exploited the linux (closed source?) driver from the intel website here:

[url]http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=21938
[/url]

Although the intel website explicitly talks only about N2800 CPUs but the puppy linux page also addresses the issue with Aspire D270 netbooks (if I am not wrong N2600's GPUs are also GMA3600?). Does this news open any hope for us to see the driver packaged in Mint in a near future?

PS. I have not checked that puppy linux yet to see if it works well on my AOD270 machine or not.

[AlbertP]

Indeed, all N2xxx and D2xxx have the same GPU. Note that this is about four-digit models only, not the older N270/N280, since those two are usually paired with decent Intel graphics.